New Albion (11 page)

Wednesday, 30 October 1850

More scandal and sadness!

Eliza Wilton returned to the theatre today, looking pale and withdrawn. Mr. Wilton had sent a note down to inform me that she would be dancing after the interval tonight.

Mrs. Toffat was the first to console the young girl. She sidled up to Eliza while she was waiting backstage to rehearse
The Murder House
. I heard Mrs. Toffat say something to the effect of: “He’s a wicked boy. Nobody should treat a respectable young lady like that.”

Her eyes welling with tears, Eliza replied, “But I love him, Mrs. Toffat, I love him.”

Mrs. Toffat took the innocent in her arms and murmured, “There, there, my girl. Love is a hard thing. Do you observe my customary suit of black?” Mrs. Toffat stepped backwards into the wings to show off her dress, which resembled the broad black flag of a pirate ship.

Eliza looked at her quizzically. “I do.”

“I have buried three husbands,” said Mrs. Toffat, her lips pursed and her jowls shaking ominously. “I have been where you are.” She embraced Eliza again. “If you choose to go through with this, then so be it. But if I were in your place, I would find a worthy apothecary to free me of it.”

Miss Wilton emitted a startled little cry and stepped back from Mrs. Toffat’s motherly embrace. “Mrs. Toffat,” she said, her young face hard, “I am surprised. I’m sure I wouldn’t think of such a thing.”

At that moment, Mr. Farquhar Pratt came up from the stage door minus his habitual greatcoat. His shirt was open nearly to his waist, revealing the gray hair on his weak chest. He looked as though he had been running; he was frantic and out of breath. His eyes darting wildly about, he confronted those actors present and shouted, in a strange, high-pitched voice, “They’re out to get me! They’re out to get me!”

My first impression was that Pratty was somehow playacting and having the rest of us on, although such an activity would be foreign to his otherwise staid nature. “Mr. Farquhar Pratt,” I said. “Is this a joke of some sort?”

“Yes,” he said, again in that weird high pitch, “joke all you like, but you won’t fool me.”

I tried to steady him with my gaze. “Are you sure you’re quite well, Mr. Farquhar Pratt?”

Like a hurt animal, he scurried about, crashing into the gothic set which had been erected in the stage grooves. The quiet-mannered Mr. Simpson moved toward him and tried to placate him, which inspired Farquhar Pratt to rush down stage and to leap into the auditorium.

“If you would allow me,” said Mr. Simpson in a nasal voice, “I would only like to help you, Mr. Farquhar Pratt.”

“No! No!” shouted Pratty, his arms outstretched in a melodramatic pose. “You’re all in’t, I can tell.”

“In what, sir?” inquired Mr. Simpson. The other actors joined him at the lip of the stage.

Mr. Farquhar Pratt ran to the back of the auditorium and stood against the wall, his arms pressed into the velveteen wallpaper as if to anchor him. “In this plot to cook and eat me.”

“To cook and eat you?” said Mr. Simpson incredulously. He took a deep breath and wondered, as did we all, how he had offended the gods in order to exact this kind of punishment.

“Aye, sir. You, the madhouse keeper. The fat one there –” he pointed at Mrs. Toffat, who could not hide her anger and embarrassment – “the cook.”

“Somebody get Mr. Wilton,” Mr. Simpson whispered so that Pratty could not hear. “This is not
Sweeney Todd
, Mr. Farquhar Pratt. This is the New Albion Theatre in Whitechapel.”

Gesturing toward Eliza Wilton, Farquhar Pratt fell to his knees. “Cecily,” he screamed, “Cecily Maybush! Help me! Find the string of pearls before it is too late!”

Miss Wilton burst into tears again and had to be escorted offstage.

I stepped down into the auditorium and spoke in measured cadences to Mr. Farquhar Pratt, who scurried about at the back of the stalls like a caged rat. “Please remain calm,” I said, “and allow us to help you, sir.” I knew that if I moved another inch he would be out the front door and into the street.

At last, Mr. Wilton entered hurriedly to the stage, looking grey and stern. Mrs. Wilton was not far behind him. “What is the to-do?” he asked, surveying the perplexed faces of all those around him.

“It’s Pratty,” said Mr. Simpson out of the corner of his mouth. “He’s become a bloody nutter.”

Mr. Wilton came down stage and tried to address Farquhar Pratt, who cowered against the back wall of the auditorium like a frightened animal. “There he is!” shouted Pratty as he pointed an outstretched finger at Mr. Wilton. “Mr. Sweeney Todd himself. The Demon Barber of Fleet Street!”

When Farquhar Pratt turned and bolted toward the front of house, some of the men in the company, myself included, gave chase. We saw the doors at the front entry slam shut and ran into the street after the old man. His madness made him surprisingly swift, and it required the sprinting talents of young Mr. Tyrone to catch up with Mr. Farquhar Pratt near Petticoat Lane. The market was in full swing, reverberant with barkers and walnut roasters and sellers of used and recently fingered clothing. Several amazed hawkers watched as Mr. Tyrone administered a flurry of blows upon Farquhar Pratt’s person, thereby bringing him to the cobblestones and rendering him incapable of further resistance. There was only a momentary lull in the hubbub, broken with the lamentation, “Cockels! Eels! Fish of all sorts!” as the men of the theatre scooped up the insensible Mr. Farquhar Pratt and carted him back inside.

Thursday, 31 October 1850

I visited Mr. Farquhar Pratt in his digs this morning. He is living amongst the Huguenot weavers in Bethnal Green, in a downstairs flat. There seemed to be a horrible row going on in the upstairs the whole time I was there – the crash of heavy footfalls across the floor, a woman caterwauling, a male voice responding drunkenly, the piercing shriek of an unhappy infant. How anybody could write in these surroundings was beyond my comprehension.

Pratty’s flat was itself a study in austerity. It contained two spare rooms. There was a plain wooden table in one of them, with two wooden chairs beside it. This must be where Mr. Farquhar Pratt does most of his writing. At one end of the room were a pump and a sink. A few grimy dishes had their resting place in the sink, along with other culinary instruments. There was no sideboard, no other furniture in the main room. There were no pictures on the walls. Any objects of comfort had, I suspect, been sold off long ago.

Mr. Farquhar Pratt’s wife, whom I’d never met before this day, was seated in one of the chairs by the table, her eyes fixed on the bare wall opposite. She too was in her sixties but not round and jolly like many of the matrons one encounters in the theatre. She
was gaunt and sallow-looking, her eyes darkened by years of strug
gle and pain. Her gray hair was fairly pasted to her head, as though she had not had occasion to bathe in a long while.

The bedroom was perhaps six feet by nine feet. It contained a frameless bed with a sagging straw mattress, upon which Mr. Farquhar Pratt reposed. Beside the bed, there was a table of unfinished wood, upon which was situated a wash basin and Malthus’ book
An Essay on the Principle of Population
. At the foot of the bed, there was a rusty chamber pot. On the wall beside the bed, a curious engraving of what looked in the gloom to be a young girl.

A gruff young surgeon from London Middlesex was bent over Mr. Farquhar Pratt’s prone body when I entered the bedroom. He had his white shirt-sleeves rolled up, and he was grasping Pratty’s wrist, groping intently for a pulse. “I’ve given him enough opium to kill a large barnyard animal,” he said, almost without looking at me. “He’ll sleep the rest of the day and some of the night, at least.” He shook his head as he surveyed the comatose man one last time. “God knows these laudanum addicts are hardest to treat. No drug seems to have any effect on them.” At last, he turned to me, staring blankly into my eyes for a moment. “Who the devil are you?” he asked.

“His friend,” I mumbled. That was not exactly the truth; I’d had no particular friendship with the old man until then. I’d never been in his flat before. I had shared little more than words with him, usually mild chastisements for submitting a script too late to the Lord Chamberlain’s office. I was beginning to feel a kinship with Pratty now, however, beginning to see that he was not just living out his own old age but mine as well, and the old age of humankind. “What is the cause of Mr. Farquhar Pratt’s illness?”

“Hard to tell,” said the young doctor as he began wrapping up his instruments and placing them in a black satchel. “
Ramollissement
of the brain, perhaps, brought on by a life of laudanum use.”

“Ramollissement?”
I’d never heard the word before.

“Softening,” the doctor said, snapping the satchel shut. “He’ll be in the ground before long.”

“Is there no treatment?”

The doctor cast me a withering look on his way to the bedroom door, in part to thank me for asking too many questions in the middle of his busy day. “If the behavior is erratic enough,” he said, “or if it persists over a long period, there is always Bedlam.”

“The insane asylum?”

“That is where many who find themselves in this man’s predicament are sent.” Without so much as a “good day,” he turned on his heels and was on his way. I heard him tell Mr. Farquhar Pratt’s wife, as he was leaving, to stay the course and to reach him by courier post should the patient’s condition worsen.

There was time to say a sterile prayer while Pratty slept, the kind of prayer one reserves for a man one barely knows, the kind of prayer which says, “There but for the grace of God…” After listening to his gurgling breath, audible even over the caterwauling
upstairs, I turned to leave. My shoes clacked across the floor in the main room.

I passed Mrs. Farquhar Pratt on my way out. She did not look at me and did not offer to say goodbye. I stopped at the front door. “Do you have some food in the house?” I asked.

“Best to leave us in peace now,” she murmured, more to the barren wall than to me.

Friday, 1 November 1850

Company meeting this morning. Mr. Hicks and his supporters, comprising most of the company and stagehands, sat against one wall of the rehearsal hall. Mr. Hicks was newly shaved and barbered, a remnant of tissue blotting a razor cut on his chin, looking every bit the reformed alcoholic. Against the opposite wall sat Neville Watts, looking chastened, his blackened eyes having recently regained their natural hue. Sitting on either side of Mr. Watts were Mr. and Mrs. Wilton, who both seemed much lost in thought, as though looking for their way out of the labyrinth at Hampton Court Palace. Several of the ladies of the company, including Mrs. Toffat and Fanny Hardwick, were seated along the same wall. Of all the actresses, Fanny was most in support of Mr. Watts. She had been a party to one or more of Mr. Hicks’ drunken stage kisses, whereby he had endeavoured to slide his tongue down her beautiful throat, and she had lost her sympathy for him even as they shared an intimate moment.

Only Mr. Simpson sat apart from the general hubbub, look
ing out one of the greasy windows in the rehearsal wall, watching the rain. Mr. Simpson has spent an inordinate amount of time looking out windows lately, as if convinced that his ardent longing will bring Suzy back. I’m almost surprised that he would want her back, but I know that love does many wondrous things to men.

“Well,” Mr. Wilton began, not with his usual verve and composure, “the future of our little theatre is at stake. A house divided cannot stand, and it is now clear to me that, by virtue of incidents beyond my control, this has become a house divided.” He paused a moment to survey all present. Several of Mr. Hicks’ supporters squirmed in their chairs, while the supporters of Neville Watts gazed unwaveringly ahead like riverboat pilots. “Fisticuffs hurled upon stage! We have allowed ourselves to degenerate to an intolerable level and, I do not mind saying, such a degeneration cannot but have a furthering effect upon the evident decline of the national drama.”

There was a general murmur from the company, all in agreement that the fate of the drama generally was tied to the cart of the New Albion Theatre in Whitechapel. The stagehand Forbes, who was seated across the room from me in Mr. Hicks’ camp, shouted, “Hear! Hear!”

Given this much affirmation, Mr. Wilton arose to his full and considerable height and approached the centre of the room. “For the good of all,” he declaimed, “we have need of apologies. Apologies and reconciliation. For the good of all.” He paused and then gestured toward Neville Watts. “I call upon the esteemed Mr. Watts to begin.”

Mr. Watts adopted the posture of the eminent thespian at first, his neck arched as though he had found something extremely interesting on the ceiling. He seemed lost in thought. “When I first came here,” Mr. Watts began meekly, “I had only recently left the company of Macready at the Royal Lyceum in Edinburgh. I understand now that my conversations with some of you, and my subsequent actions, may have been interpreted as arrogance.”

There were murmurs of “no, no” from the ladies behind him and from Mr. and Mrs. Wilton.

“On one point I stand firm. I will never do anything to debase this alter, this holy place, this shrine we call the theatre. My life has been devoted to the furtherance of the cause of the British Drama and, God willing, I will in future spare not blood, sweat, or sinew in this struggle.” A tear ran down Mr. Watts’ gaunt cheek. “I also realize now that despite my good intentions, I have insulted a fine man and a fine actor. Mr. Hicks” – at this
Mr. Hicks looked up at Neville Watts and smiled beneficently –
“Mr. Hicks has had a venerable career on the stage and before that in Her Majesty’s Navy. He has understudied good Thom Cooke at the Surrey, has reeled and hornpiped at the Britannia, has played Shakespearean heroes at the Vic, in a career spanning nearly twenty years. He is entirely deserving of our respect – nay, of my respect – and I promise all present that he shall receive his due from me.”